Ronnie 'The Hawk' Hawkins to accept an honorary Order of Canada

The name Ronnie Hawkins may never be spoken with the same reverence as Bob Dylan or The Band but, in one way or another, the man affectionately known as The Hawk is responsible for both.

Born in Huntsville, Arkansas, Hawkins chased the rock ’n’ roll dream to Memphis but somewhere along the way took a detour to Ontario, stumbling onto a burgeoning music scene and a group of rollicking musicians he helped sculpt into greatness.

In 1964, Hawkins became a permanent Canadian resident and on Wednesday the rockabilly legend is being awarded an honorary Order of Canada. In 2012, he spoke with Postmedia’s Ben Kaplan about his eventful life:

On the blues, meeting Carl Perkins and coming to Canada:

“I made my first trip to Memphis in 1952 — the word rock ’n’ roll wasn’t invented yet, but I loved it, man: The music, the beat and that old boogie-woogie stuff. I was done.”
“I never played the guitar. My hands were broken all the time from all them bar fights.”
“Carl Perkins was a homebody. He’d done a lot of drinking, of course, but when he got real drunk, he would start crying — thinking about his little red-headed wife — that he had to go out and leave.”
“When I first got to Canada, it was a place called the Golden Rail (in Hamilton, Ont.). There were about seven or eight people there and when we started playing, they left in a hurry. The club owner said, ‘These ignorant hillbillies have run all my crowd off, get rid of them!’ I knew one Canadian, a musician, and the next night he got 65 people to come down to that club. They hadn’t had that many people on a Tuesday since the Second World War! Our shows were jumping for the next 10 years.”

On forming The Band, hosting John Lennon and figuring out what Bob Dylan means:

“I lost one of the great piano players in rock ’n’ roll, he got married and you know what that does. But I brought in Garth Hudson and then Robbie Robertson came in as a roadie. At that time, we had Roy Buchanan. He taught Robbie, but it didn’t matter. He had the gift anyway. I had a club back in those days and they tore up my house trailer and wrecked one of my Cadillacs. But I needed their help. My throat couldn’t do all that soul stuff — when we got that lineup together, people started noticing.”
“In the end, I didn’t want to travel and play one-nighters. You get on dope. Get on everything. I chose to make less money, stay at home and have kids, but they got good and started getting offers. It was only a matter of time.”
“I remember I made them wear tuxedos onstage to look half-decent and when they were leaving, we had a big goodbye party and they burned them. They’d been to Woodstock. They wanted to look like Neil Young.”
“I didn’t listen to The Beatles, but I knew they were making $1 million a minute. They came and stayed with me and installed 16 phone lines in one night’s notice. I woke up Sunday morning and there were these lines cutting across my fields — I’d never seen anything like that before.”
“Yoko would be on the phone with Princess Margaret or Peter Sellers, while John was working on a song. It became Imagine. When they were living at my house, I got a lot of friends back. ‘Hawk, I was just driving by.’ Meanwhile, they lived in Buffalo.”
“I was asked to play Bob Dylan in that movie Renaldo and Clara. I didn’t know much about him. I was playing every night and couldn’t follow the folk scene. But he was fun to be around. Of course, no one ever gave me a script — we were winging it, but I didn’t mind. I knew he was the real deal because Gordon Lightfoot was a fan.”
“You ain’t never going to figure out what Bob’s going to do next. Only God knows what’s going on in his mind.”

On Canada’s Walk of Fame, his health and the God:

“First thing I thought: ‘Boy, I wish all my high school girlfriends could see this.’ They thought I was going to be dead by the time I was 21.”
“Canada’s the promised land. She’s been real good to me. Where else can an ignorant old country boy from Arkansas come and make $3 million, spend five and not have to go to jail? You can’t try that in too many places without going to the penitentiary.”
“I started with a little bottle, ended with a big bottle and drank a bottle a day that way for about 10 years. The liver’s gone, the kidney’s gone and thanks to the diabetes, the legs are gone, too, but I believe in the big rocker. I’ll be 80 years old next year.”
“I believe in God probably more than anybody else on this planet, but I’m real weary of the ground crew.”